The Guide To Leveraging From Push Notifications

As the mobile industry continues to grow, business owners, app developers and marketers are constantly on the lookout for ways and means to stand out from their competition. Be it following the most latest marketing tactic or simply creating one based on their user statistics, business are going the extra length to last in the current market. But the one thing that we suggest most businesses to settle for are push notifications.

Push notifications basically enable you to notify the user of a new message or event even when he is not using your app or visiting your website. They don’t just serve as an opportunity to promote something, but also engage with the users actively to reduce churn rates.

A study by Localytics shows that users launched an app or visited a website on an average 14.7 times per month when they accepted push notifications. Those who did not, were at a mere average of 5.4 times. It was also observed that users who accepted push notifications engaged 3 times more than those who didn’t.

Push notifications today play an integral part in engagement and customer retention. Contrary to text notifications, they offer a wide range of customization and personalization offers.

When should businesses use push notifications?

In an age where personalization and context is of prime importance to acquire or retain customers, the power of push depends entirely on the business’s objectives and target audience. For users, a push notification is to serve the purpose of getting instant information regarding something they are or possibly could be interested in.

Here are a few things businesses can use push notifications for:

Boost customer engagement levels and hence, retention rates

Remain in the eyes of the customer on a regular basis

Share news, deals and promotions instantly

Automate engagement and other internal processes

How do you implement push notifications?

While developers are responsible for creating an interface for businesses to send push notifications, companies like Wigzo provide a far more robust technology for the same. It enables you to target the right person in your audience with the right message, at the right time – instead of the conventional bombarding notifications that are a part of generalised campaigns.

Most studies and data show that personalized push notifications perform 4 times better than the generalised ones.

How do push notifications appear to the target audience and users?

Push notifications are the simplest and the most non-intrusive way to notify the target audience of something.

On a typical browser on the desktop, the notification would either appear at the top or bottom right of the screen. This ensures that the person does see the notification, but does not get irritated by its timed presence or feel that it is interrupting with what he is currently doing.

On mobile though – both iOS and Android, the notifications appear at the top of the screen in the banner when the device is in use. When not in use, the notifications appear on the locked screen and can be accessed by swiping downwards or sideways – based on the device being used.

iOS offers the user more options when it comes to notifications – from sound to the type of notification (banner, alert, badge icon), the user can literally opt for what he prefers.

In simpler words, push notifications enable businesses to create and execute highly personalized campaigns for their target audience – all without interrupting or compromising on their overall experience.

How can you effectively use push notifications?

The key to running successful push notification campaigns is determine how often and what needs to be pushed to your audience. It is important that businesses ensure that each of the notifications they strategize to send out, add value to the end user.

While push notifications are mostly non-intrusive in nature, overdoing it might result in seeming like a spam. But under-doing it might result in missing an opportunity to connect with your audience and not reaching your set objectives.

Before implementing push notifications, understand what your audience is looking for, their usage behaviour and what they expect from your business. This will ensure you avoid the most common mistakes.

What are the notification metrics that businesses need to measure?

Like every other effort made by a business to market themselves better, acquire customers and retain them, push notifications should also be measured. While most marketers analyse the number, frequency and rate at which they are disabled, here are a few metrics that actually need to be kept track of:

1. Number of notifications delivered

Instead of the frequency of notifications you push out, it is important to know how many of them are actually getting delivered. Push notifications might not really get delivered to your target audience because of various reasons – network or simply because they have been disabled.

Tracking this number will let you know just how many of your customers or target audience are active. This data can then be further segregated to identify those who should be approached via other means of communication.

2. Open rate and click through rate

Since every notification is sent out with the goal of getting a visitor or user to complete a certain action, these metrics are important. Analysing these numbers will let you know just how many people are actually interested in what the notification offered them and how many are simply ignoring it.

The open and click through rates enable you to test, analyse and identify what your customers are more likely to engage with – what kind of message works the best, which day or time suits them the most, etc.

3. Interaction via push notifications

Continuing on the point above, tracking interaction is extremely important for businesses. This number will not just help you understand who your most active customers are, but will also help you identify the peak hours for engagement and the relevance of the notifications you sent to him.

This helps in identification of the kind of messages/notifications that stimulate the person notified to take some sort of action. It is also important here to set specific goals for your notifications as well as test out different actions to understand which one is the most easily taken by the customer.

4. Engagement time after notification

It is important to measure the results of every notification sent out, closely. The one number that matters a lot is the engagement time after a notification is pushed out.

How long did the user stay on the app after a notification? How long did he browse your website after being notified of something? This number helps understand the relevance of what you’re offering to the customer and the engagement that can be expected from the ones you push out in the future.

5. Number of conversions

Ideally, a push notification is supposed to aid to an end goal of a business. Be it a sale, an update or an upgrade, the number of conversions need to be measured closely – micro and macro. This will help businesses and marketers understand the effectiveness of their campaigns as well as optimize them further for better results.

6. Delivery time

The delivery time of a push notification can have a direct impact on the engagement rates. Some studies have also observed the influence to be as high as 200%. Hence, marketers should experiment with different times, analyse their performance and identify the slot that suits their business the best.

Push notifications offer a plethora of opportunities to businesses and marketers to communicate better with their existing as well as potential customers/users. But to make smart decisions, it is important to have smart analytics in place.

For every campaign that you execute using push notifications, your success metrics should be defined by the objectives. Look into every aspect of what an ideal effective campaign would result it.